


The Beauty Is

by gonta



Category: Dangan Ronpa, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Abuse, Backstory, Child Abuse, Gen, POV Second Person, headcanon heavy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9039986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonta/pseuds/gonta
Summary: Once upon a time there was a boy in muddy rainboots who merely observed.[WRITTEN BEFORE DRV3'S RELEASE, CONTAINS MANY INACCURACIES]





	

**Author's Note:**

> (EDITED 2/9)  
> christ you don't know how much i wish this fic was accurate

They pay you no mind. Who “they” are doesn’t matter: if there is a “they”, you will slip under their radar. That’s just the way it is. It’s the way it’s always been, ever since you ran off. 

It’s amazing how little people pay attention to things that don’t concern them. You notice this. People glance at you occasionally - seeing a lone child in a muddy raincoat and rainboots, long black hair covering his face, clutching a chunky spiral notebook with a cartoon design on the front as if his life depends on it is not something that happens every day. But has anyone called child services? Has anyone gone up to you and asked if you’re alright? The answer is clearly no. But you continue on anyway. You don’t know where you’re going, just that you can’t stop. Looking back is not an option. It’s not something you can do. 

 

You weren’t always alone, of course. You have a mother. You had a father. Key word being  _ had _ . Of course, he’s still the man who helped raise you, but you’ve forced yourself to disassociate him from the term of endearment.

He is no longer “father”, he is just “him”. 

You remember one night, when it got especially bad. It smelled like alcohol. He had put the air conditioner on full blast - he always did it while he was drunk, and you don’t know why. Your limbs shook so bad that you could barely move your fingers on your own, and your face was damp even though you hadn’t had a bath in days. “Be a fucking  _ man _ , Korekiyo!” he screamed in your face. “I didn’t raise you to be an emotional little crybaby, you son of a bitch.” He rubbed your heavily scarred cheek between his thumb and pointer finger, and you wished you were dead.

That wasn’t the worst of it, but it’s what stuck out in your mind the most. 

When he eventually passed out from exhaustion, you acted. It was pouring rain. You pulled on the clothes your mother told you were for rainy days, grabbed your notebook, and ran straight out of the house.

A seven-year-old shouldn’t have to live like that.

 

That brings you to now. You’re surviving, but not well. You suppose the phrase would be “surviving, but not living”. You reached a small village about a few weeks ago, and are staying there for a while. It’s all you can do. You know the second you smell alcohol on the wind, you’re gone, and no one will be able to remember your name or what you look like. It’s just what happens. 

Is this humanity?

You hang around the local library sometimes. The librarians look concerned, but they never say anything to you. 

Your hair and your fingernails are beginning to grow oily and long.

You don’t know. God, you don’t know.

 

The reason you start taking notes on people is partially out of boredom, partially out of curiosity. You want to know why the old man who lives next door to the bakery buys flowers for his wife every Tuesday, even though you hear the florist telling someone else that his wife died two years ago. You want to know why someone always leaves little paper cranes on the library shelf containing war history books. You want to know why life goes on for these people and not for you.

You are a have-not, and that’s all there is to it.

You sit by the dumpster fire of another homeless man who everyone avoids. You say nothing, you just stare into the fire as if expecting it to tell you something while he rants.

The fire burns your hands and you clumsily bandage them with strips of a shopping bag. Your handwriting is especially illegible as you try to write what you feel.

But you don’t feel anything. Feeling is for emotional little crybabies. 

 

Someone leaves a book on the table where you normally sit at the library. Greek myths, it says. Written by someone whose name sounds English. You’ve never been to Greece, and you’re not entirely sure where it is, but you open it up anyway. Your fingers dirty the pages, and you feel ashamed, but you’re also enrapt by the stories. You finish the book, and immediately start reading it again. 

You spend the night overanalyzing what you’ve read, covering several pages of your notebook in crayon scribbles. You write so much that you have to make your handwriting smaller. 

When you go to the library the next day, there’s another book there. Norse myths.

You’ve never seen anything so beautiful in your life.

 

Time passes. 

No one acknowledges you, but that’s fine. You feel particularly rueful. The things you’ve been feeling lately aren’t manly. You sit on your burnt hands until they go numb, believing wholeheartedly that people know what you think and are ashamed of you for it. 

This makes as much sense to you as avoiding cracks in the sidewalk.

A weathered-looking old man comes to the library one day. People sit on chairs and listen to him talk. You hide behind an empty chair, fearing that people will look at you and your muddy boots if you sit on it like you’re supposed to.

The man talks of war. You know about war. But the man doesn’t tell his stories in the way you think he does. He talks of bravery, and sacrifice, and truth. You see the backs of people’s heads nodding approvingly. Your legs start shaking, but you don’t cry. You can’t. Because humanity isn’t nice, and if they saw you they would probably kick you just like you’ve been kicked before.

You hate the man. You hate how he talks as if people are good and you wish he would just drop dead.

 

Everyone has left the seminar except for you. You’re frozen there. Something is keeping you from moving. Your hands clutch the sides of the chair so hard that you imagine your knuckles popping open. You watch as the man slings his bag over his shoulder with a grunt and makes his way down the aisle. It’s unlikely that he’ll notice you, but you squeeze your eyes shut anyway.

If you can’t see him, he can’t see you.

He sees you.

“Aren’t you a little… young to be listening to me prattling on, son?” Oh, god. He’s talking to you. The last person who talked to you directly was him. You wish he’d stop talking, in that weird old-fashioned way of his. You peek at him hesitantly from under the hair that covers your face and he gives you a weary smile. “It’s always nice to see kids like you taking an interest in an old fart like me, though.”

It comes out before you can stop yourself. “You’re… you’re wrong.” Your voice creaks like a machine that hasn’t been used for centuries, and he raises his eyebrows.

“Hm?”

“A-a-about… about people. They aren’t like that. P-people don’t h-help anyone or sacrifice anything for anyone. That’s just not it. It’s not it.” You want to run away, but you can’t. You just keep talking. “A-and… I saw you were crying towards the end. You shouldn’t d-do that. It’s not… it’s… not…” 

Why can’t you just stop?

He lays a hand on your shoulder. “What’s your name?”

You’re shaking so hard that you’d probably register on the richter scale. You don’t look him in the eye, but you manage to choke out an answer anyway. “...Korekiyo Shinguuji.” 

He raises an eyebrow at you and says nothing, but gives you a quick nod and begins to walk past you. You watch his back for a few seconds. Somehow, your feet start moving on their own, and you track mud out of the library as you follow the man. He says nothing, and you say nothing, but when he gets to his car he opens the passenger door for you and looks at you expectantly as you clamber in. 

It takes a warm car ride to make you realize how cold you’ve been.

 

The man tells you his name, and that he has a son who you remind him of. He shows you a picture of him, and you don’t comment on the fact that it’s draped with black ribbons. 

He has a lot of books.

You sit at a table and eat something, your feet dangling a couple of inches off the ground. Neither of you say anything, though you feel his gaze move from your hands to your mouth and back again. 

You try to avoid speaking for as long as you can, but something tells you that it’s no use.

He seems surprised when you ask him to tell you more stories, but he obliges. 

You wake up the next day in a guest room with a stack of clothes on the floor. There’s a peculiar face mask with a zipper on it on top of the pile. All the clothes are stiff, but you like them.

 

Over time, you resign yourself to reading all the books on his shelf. You tell him how you’ve been observing people, and he seems interested. 

“Anthropology?” he asks. You don’t know what that means, so you shrug. Your education begins.

He is a traveler, and he takes you places. You meet all sorts of people. You begin to thaw. People are really quite kind. 

You draft a new theory: human beings have an inherent beauty to them, in their mannerisms. It’s a beauty that  _ he _ lacked, and this makes you an anomaly. As such, you are the perfect person to study such a thing.

You propose this to the old man, and he laughs, but not unkindly. 

 

When you finish his last book, you’re much older. You’re taller now, though your hands are still bandaged. 

The house is quiet, and your shutting the book closed breaks the silence if only for a second. You stare down at something that has only entered the house about a week ago: a framed picture draped with black ribbon, surrounded by softly pulsing candles. A familiar face looks back at you from within the frame.

Behind your mask, you smile.

“...Thank you.”

You know what you have to do: carry on.

Quietly, you walk down the hall and close the door shut behind you with a click. 

A new world awaits you.

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? 

**Author's Note:**

>  _And the beauty is, when you realize, when you realize,_  
>  Someone could be looking for a someone like you.


End file.
